Growing up, my go-tos on my monthly visits to the comics shop That’s Entertainment in my hometown of Worcester were Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, and . . . the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who are about to hit the big screen again in the Seth Rogen-produced “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” out Aug. 2.
That’s one of the most frequently asked questions I get from young readers when touring the country with my graphic novels. The answer isn’t binary for me because my allegiances were always character-specific.
Of course, neither Marvel nor DC created the Ninja Turtles: They were the brainchild of a small indie publisher, Mirage Studios, which was located in Northampton.
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Growing up in Worcester, Northampton felt like another world, despite being just an hour west. When I declared to my grandparents that I would be settling in “Hamp,” they looked at me as if I were leaving for California. Would they even have a Dunkin’ Donuts there?
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The Ninja Turtles’ connection to Northampton literally put the mysterious city on the map for me; I now make it my home.
Jay Martin, owner of the Phoenix Rising shop in downtown Northampton, adjusts the arms on a large Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figurine that greets passersby. Lane Turner/Globe Staff
As the legend goes, the heroes in a half-shell were born out of a brainstorming session between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. They were goofing off in their Dover, N.H., apartment when Eastman drew a masked turtle brandishing nunchucks. The two went back and forth, entertaining one another with their sketches, when Laird added the words “Teenage Mutant.” This was at the tail end of 1983. The duo self-published 3,000 black-and-white copies of “Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” issue #1 under the banner Mirage Studios, and the response was . . . bodacious, basically the early ‘80s version of “going viral.”
The first few issues were successful enough for Eastman and Laird to move their operation out of their shared apartment and into an office space in Northampton, building a team to help meet the demand for the comics. The original run of the Ninja Turtles indie comics was dark and edgy: It would be unrecognizable to fans whose entry points into the TMNT world were the playful animated TV series or ubiquitous Playmates Toys line.
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This mass media push introduced the greater world to the Turtles via their infectious theme song: Leonardo (“leads”), Donatello (“does machines”), Raphael (“is cool but rude”), and Michelangelo (“is a party dude”). The four brothers were trained in ninjutsu by their adoptive father, a mutated rat named Splinter, in the sewers of New York City.
Eastman and Laird profoundly impacted me as a young artist in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Their work showed me that you could have a successful, creator-owned comic book character — a different fate than what befell the creators of Superman, who had lost rights to their characters without proper compensation.
When I entered double-digits, I blew into my “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” game cartridge and played my Nintendo Entertainment System until I defeated the top boss. I sat in the theater on the opening weekend of the 1990 live-action movie. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was a fun and gritty film with the boys in green brought to life by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book authors Kevin Eastman (left) and Peter Laird talk to reporters at the premiere of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie at the Academy of Music in Northampton, March 29, 1990. Mark M. Murray/The Republican
Inspired, I spent my time drawing fan art and producing stop-motion animated videos with Ninja Turtle action figures. I found childhood drawings in my mother’s house after she died. She and I were separated for the majority of my youth, as she was incarcerated. We had a tradition of mailing one another cartoon drawings, a ritual I wrote about in my graphic memoir “Hey, Kiddo.”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles childhood fan art made by Jarrett J. Krosoczka 1989-1990. Jarrett J. Krosoczka
While the first TMNT live-action film was successful, parents weren’t so happy about its dark undertones and violence — and executives wanted to sell Happy Meals. The Ninja Turtles got a cameo by Vanilla Ice in 1991′s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze,” introducing his earworm “Ninja Rap.”
Sitting in the movie theater (again), I was less enthralled than the first time around. Then came “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III,” and I wished I could travel back in time like the Turtles — and not buy that movie ticket. Don’t even get me started on the live-action stage show, sponsored by Pizza Hut, in which the Turtles formed a rock band and toured the country with the “Coming Out of Their Shells Tour.”
I can suspend my disbelief that mutant turtles are training as ninjas in the sewers of New York City — but mutant turtles that wear denim vests and play the keytar? That’s where I draw the line.
By the time I settled in Northampton in 2006, Eastman had sold his shares of TMNT to Laird, and Eastman’s famed Words & Pictures Museum of Fine Sequential Art, a fixture of downtown Northampton, had closed. Turtlemania may have peaked in the early 1990s, but I was still giddy to know that my new hometown was where it had all started. In 2009, Laird sold off the rights to all things TMNT to Viacom, opting for a quieter existence. Turtle Power had left Northampton.
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Over the years, several attempts have been made to resurrect Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael — in addition to a CGI-animated movie, titled “TMNT” (2007), there have been multiple animated shows. Nickelodeon made a popular animated series, and Paramount put out a live-action reboot with roided-up Turtles courtesy of Michael Bay. I could barely get through the trailer.
But we may be at the precipice of a true comeback. Eastman became an active writer and illustrator on the comics line again starting in 2011 — the prodigal son had returned to the Turtles! And I have high hopes that “Mutant Mayhem” will bring back the world of the Turtles in a meaningful way.
Designed by artist Woodrow White, the animation has the aesthetics of a punk-rock painting. The spirit seems to capture both the fun campiness of the animated series and the grittiness of the original comics.
And after all these years, it’s the first film adaptation that will focus on the teenage aspects of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Just as Charles Schulz cast real kids to voice Charlie Brown and the gang, real teenagers were cast to voice these teen Turtles. I look forward to seeing the movie with my kids with the same anticipation I feel when I bring them to Easthampton’s Comics N’ More shop to browse the spinner racks. As Vanilla Ice once proclaimed, “Go ninja, go ninja, go!”
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A pedestrian passes a mural featuring the TMNT crew in downtown Northampton. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, have roots in Northampton. Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Downtown Northampton still has a few reminders of the Ninja Turtles’ origins. They feature in a mural at 135 Main St., and four TMNT-themed sewer tops are coming to town. I also included the Turtles in a mural I painted at Forbes Library, which celebrates various book characters created by authors and artists from around the Pioneer Valley.
In a detail so small and partially obscured that librarians claimed they’d never noticed it, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle peers out from a mural inside Northampton’s Forbes Library. The figure is only a couple inches wide, sharing wall space on a staircase with Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat. Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Still, the truest relics of Turtlemania are visible at the former site of the Words & Pictures Museum. When outside the R. Michelson Galleries on Main Street, look up above the AT&T store. You will spot stone Ninja Turtle-like gargoyles adorning the facade — like ancient Greek statues reminding you of the empire that once stood.
Ninja Turtle-like gargoyles watch over Main Street in downtown Northampton. Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Comics creators, if they’re lucky, create characters that live on. I often wonder what will become of Lunch Lady, the star of my kids’ graphic novel series. (The spatula-wielding superhero features in a mural in Logan Airport.) I know what a character can mean to a comics-obsessed kid, how drawing fan art can inspire your imagination, and how the panels of a comic book can offer an escape into a fantastical fictional world.
Jarrett J. Krosoczka is a National Book Award finalist for “Hey, Kiddo” and the New York Times-bestselling graphic novelist of the Lunch Lady series. His latest graphic memoir, “Sunshine: How One Camp Taught Me About Life, Death, and Hope,” was published in April.